Looks like I got a dud. I didn't notice it in the daytime when I got it, but went to read at night and it was obvious.

The left LED on the bottom doesn't turn on evenly with the other 3 LEDs. When the brightness setting is below 11, the left LED stays off. Above 11, it does turn on but it's not as bright as the other 3 LEDs. This causes a huge dark spot over the bottom left quarter of the screen with any brightness setting. It's even more obvious that in the pictures show.

This is ad-free PW2. I'll probably return it to Amazon and pick up the ad version at Best Buy and pay the $20. Question though: does the $20 fee to make the Kindle ad-free apply to the lifetime of that particular device, or does it carry over to Kindles I get in the future?

Looks like I got a dud. I didn't notice it in the daytime when I got it, but went to read at night and it was obvious.

The left LED on the bottom doesn't turn on evenly with the other 3 LEDs. When the brightness setting is below 11, the left LED stays off. Above 11, it does turn on but it's not as bright as the other 3 LEDs. This causes a huge dark spot over the bottom left quarter of the screen with any brightness setting. It's even more obvious that in the pictures show.

This is ad-free PW2. I'll probably return it to Amazon and pick up the ad version at Best Buy and pay the $20. Question though: does the $20 fee to make the Kindle ad-free apply to the lifetime of that particular device, or does it carry over to Kindles I get in the future?

Call Amazon CS and they will send you a new unit as a replacement with no cost to you. Yours is the first real defect I've seen posted here for the PW 2013. They may even give you a small credit for your inconvenience.